


trace a line (come back for me)

by withoutwords



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Intimacy, M/M, Magic, Post-Canon, Romance, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 20:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11790540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: They’re a mess. Patchwork, like Blue’s clothes or Gansey’s journals – sewing and pasting and stapling one piece to another piece until somehow they just make sense.





	trace a line (come back for me)

**Author's Note:**

> a little something post-canon, over the course of the summer before Adam goes to college. this is my first raven fic, and it’s a bit messy, so all feedback is welcome. thanks so much!

The first time Ronan gets Adam’s shirt off he _revels_ , taking it in like it might disappear, like Adam would ever change his mind. He’s stripped bare in a new way (pale and pointy but slowly curving the edges), and Ronan says, “I thought there would be,” and stops. “Sorry,” he mutters, instead of the thing he was going to say; the knowable thing, the, _I thought there would be more scars_.

Robert Parrish was only stupid enough to hurt Adam in the first place.

The evidence was always fleeting.

“There’s one here,” Adam tells Ronan, pushing at the waistband of his jeans just a little, and showing him the small line just above his hip. His breath hitches when Ronan’s mouth goes to it, warm, and wet, like the salve for his hands. His body quakes with Ronan’s face right there, wanting, wanting, wanting, the list of things he wants too long to understand.

Ronan just says, “Do you have more?” with a firm grip on Adam’s thigh, and Adam goes through them, one by one – by his rib cage and under his collar and on the knobbly end of his spine like the mouth of a creek feeding out across his back. And maybe they’re tattoos of a kind, and maybe he’s carried them, humped them, across every other war he’s faced.

But he’d give them up right now. Ronan could take them away if he wanted. With his mouth and his hands and his dreams. With sheer will.

Adam knows he would.

*

Gansey, Blue and Henry take off one morning, so early even the sky hasn’t decided what it is. Blacks and greys and pinks and whites and the far off promise of some blue, just over the horizon. Adam feels a pang of something, jealousy or longing – or maybe it’s that other thing he’s been pretending he doesn’t feel.

The only thing still keeping him here.

(Ronan’s careful not to stand too close.)

“Well, gentlemen,” Gansey says with a gravel rough voice, knocking knuckles with Adam and slapping Ronan on the shoulder. “So long as I can’t convince you to come along.”

“You can’t,” Ronan tells him, the same way he said, _I’d rather eat a box full of razors, Parrish, that’s how much I don’t want to go_.

“We’ll buy you a souvenir Ronan,” Blue says, hugging Adam. “One of those little globes that fills with snow when you shake it.”

Adam tries to hide his smirk but he thinks he mostly fails.

“Or a postcard for the fridge,” Gansey suggests, cutting off the retort Adam’s sure was on Ronan’s lips. _Gansey’s_ not hiding his smile – and he’s been doing a lot of that lately. More alive than Adam’s ever seen him (apparently dying is good for that).

“Let’s go Bonnie and Clyde,” Henry yells from inside the car, banging on the roof, and Blue cackles as she climbs into the passenger seat telling Henry, “We told you, we’re not robbing any banks.”

“Well, have fun,” Gansey says, almost strained, like he doesn’t mean to insinuate anything but it’s all he can think to do. Adam sees Blue’s mouth twist in a way that says she knows something – but Adam doesn’t know much himself, so he doesn’t mind.

“Yeah, you too,” Adam offers, quiet and waving and they both stand elbow to elbow watching the car skid out, Henry’s arm flapping stupidly out the window.

Monmouth is big and hollow before them, just a shell now, just a memory. Maybe one day they’ll fill it with more, and maybe they’ll be happier, but for now Adam just breathes a sigh of relief when Ronan says,

“You want to get out of here?”

“Please.”

*

Adam’s got a To-Do list as long as his arm, collecting dust back at St. Agnes. He was checking them off as he went (get boxes, replace diff, find letter), but kept turning away from it, kept forgetting, kept trying to convince himself he had plenty of time, always plenty of time.

Now he can’t remember when he last left The Barns.

It’s not just this keeping him here, he doesn’t think – Ronan on top of him and pressing him into the mattress and weighing him down with his body and his hands and _all those feelings_. It’s the Barns itself, like winding tendrils, like they’re wrapping around his bones and keeping him here.

He’s part of this place, or it’s part of him, his magic always buzzing right there on the surface, the little hairs on his arms on end.

“Where’s Opal?” Adam asks on a breath, pulling away from Ronan’s mouth, throwing a worried look toward the door.

Ronan gives him a look Adam can roughly translate to, _are you fucking serious?_ rolling his hips and ducking his head close and being impossible, being that element Adam can’t contain. “Chasing rats, what do I know?”

“Do you think we should, you know,” Adam digs blunt nails into Ronan’s shoulders. “Put the brakes on, a bit?

“You’re worried about her sensitivities, Parrish? Really?”

“Of course I am!”

Ronan pulls back a little, enough that Adam can see colour flash across his eyes. He smiles in that jagged way, a wound he forgets sometimes. “Or are you just worried about this?”

“About what?”

“About you, and me, and the fact there’s nothing to shelter you from it any more. No nosy friends, no Cabeswater, no fucking homicidal Latin teachers with - ”

“Ronan,” Adam says, firm, pulling at Ronan when he tries to get up, get away. “Ronan, I want you.”

It seems silly to think he has to say it out loud.

“I do. _A lot_.”

Ronan scoffs at him, an ugly thing, looking embarrassed, seeming exposed. “You don’t know what a lot is,” he tells Adam, but the _I do_ goes understood. “ _You don’t_.”

“What do I have to do to convince you?” Adam asks, rolling them over, pinning Ronan down, knowing that Ronan is just letting him, that if he were truly angry he wouldn’t be getting away with this at all. “What do you want?”

Ronan surges up enough to catch Adam’s mouth in a kiss, to pull him down by the collar and open for him. They’re on their sides, their limbs entangled, their bodies pressed so close Adam can feel a heartbeat. Whose, he doesn’t know.

“What do you want?” Adam asks again, and Ronan cares about him enough that he doesn’t say, _stay_.

“Just shut the fuck up and kiss me, Parrish.”

Adam does.

*

Adam dreams too. It just doesn’t seem to matter, in the scheme of things – when he’s watching Ronan’s body sieze, or he’s shaking Ronan awake, or he’s jolted into consciousness by Ronan’s hollering, coughing, cries, his body dripping in sweat.

What would Adam say?

I dreamt about us last night. I dreamt about you on your knees, me stretched down across your back, your tattoo humming between us like it was alive, like it could feel everything I felt.

I dreamt about Gansey last night, and Blue and Henry and the three of them singing along to a song that would probably make you want to jump out of their moving car.

I dreamt about my father last night, how much we are the same, only he started to peel in half, started to crumble into something I didn’t recognise.

I dreamt and dreamt and dreamt, but what did it matter?

I woke up and I found you screaming.

*

They’re a mess. Patchwork, like Blue’s clothes or Gansey’s journals – sewing and pasting and stapling one piece to another piece until somehow they just make sense. _They do_ , make sense, when Ronan’s got a hand up the back of Adam’s shirt or Adam’s got his teeth sunk into Ronan’s neck.

When they’re knee deep in grass and water and mud and muck and there’s a gentle wind through the trees. When they’re dreaming or scrying or laid out across the floor with just their fingertips touching. When they’re side by side on a church pew pretending to pray, pretending that they’d ever pray for anything different.

They make sense in this place where nothing else seems to move.

Except it does. They do.

Sometimes Adam can feel himself getting older.

“What will you do when I’m gone,” Adam asks, stupidly. He watches Ronan a lot. He watches Ronan sleep, he watches Ronan eat, he watches Ronan work from sun up to sun down, moving and hauling and pushing and plowing like every drop of sweat is something earned.

He watches Ronan when he doesn’t know, he watches when he does.

He watches and never wants to stop.

“What do you mean?” Ronan says, biting, and before Adam can answer shoots back, “This.”

“Okay.” Adam nods. “Okay, I just - ”

“Is that not enough for you, college boy?”

“Don’t be stupid - ”

“Don’t be a shitb-”

Adam kisses him, to shut him up, to wrap around him and settle his thrum and show him, make him understand, _this_ is the Ronan he wants, _this_ is the Ronan he might even love, whole in all the ways that matter.

Whole in all the ways he wants to be.

“Take me to bed,” Adam tells him, tangling their fingers together and pulling him towards Ronan’s bedroom. Every nerve in his body is a ley line, bursting with energy, fighting to live. He wants to possess, he wants to praise, he wants to break down every little thing about Ronan Lynch - the dirt under his nails, the smell of his body, the cut of his muscles as they become more defined – and plaster it across his body.

He wants to have it all the time, all to himself, but he can’t, he can’t.

Ronan needs to be here, and Adam needs to be anywhere else.

*

When Adam leaves, he won’t cry. He won’t stop Ronan from pushing him up against the car, rough and angry and mean and sorry. He won’t protest when Ronan holds him tight enough to leave a mark, or breathes him in like he’s taking the scent to his dreams. (Make his dreams better).

He won’t do anything but whisper, “I’ll see you soon,” and mean it, watching Ronan’s mouth tremble.

He’ll press his fingers to it.

He'll feel his name on Ronan's lips. 

_Adam._

*

Ronan touched his neck once, a long time ago, before any of this, before Adam really knew. It was so gentle, so quick, as if he’d thought he’d been dreaming and then realized he wasn’t. Just below Adam’s hairline, where the tendons stretch out, the pad of his thumb a soft tap, morse code.

It burned then, the promise of something. A tattoo bleeding into his body.

What would one day be Cabeswater's.

What would one day be _them_.

A scar to wear with pride. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr


End file.
